Poverty Dynamics in Turkey

This paper examines poverty dynamics in Turkey using a nationally representative panel data covering the 2005–08 period. The aim is to understand mobility in and out of poverty and its correlates. We find that almost a quarter of the poor are persistently poor. The conditional and unconditional exit rates that we estimate are within the range of values reported for developed countries in the literature. That the income events—but not transfers—dominate both poverty entries and exits is indicative of the major role labor markets play in the lives of the poor. In particular, we argue that given the characteristics of the poor and modest levels of social assistance, the reason for mobility rates close to European averages must be sought in the informal economy.     

How best to link poverty reduction and debt sustainability in IMF–World Bank models?

This paper attempts to provide an economic model in the context of developing countries to address the policy strategies related to poverty reduction. With a view to deal with the shortcomings of the existing approaches as regards poverty reduction, this paper develops a model on the basis of the policy framework of the IMF and the World Bank to show how demand growth can be a crucial mechanism in determining the potential rate of growth, and then to suggest ways in which poverty—conceptualised officially in absolute terms with a subjective cut‐off point (e.g. US $1/$2 a day), and a new objective measure in terms of consumption deprivation—can be linked with the key policy variables contained in the adjustment programmes. A strategy of investment in infrastructure and in human development, and improving access to credit markets, particularly in rural areas to encourage or ‘crowd in’ private investment is a precondition for growth and poverty alleviation. Debt relief can only provide a temporary, not a sustainable, solution to the problem of reducing poverty.     

"送猪崽"与"折现金":我国产业精准扶贫的路径分析与政策模拟研究

产业扶贫旨在将贫困户的生产活动纳入社会产业大循环,因此其一直是全世界扶贫工作的重要方式和主要目标之一.我国产业精准扶贫出现了两条新路径:一是GTP路径,即向贫困户送猪崽、鸡苗和良种等资本,直接将贫困户的生产纳入当地的产业体系;二是GSP路径,即将扶贫资金折合现金并由贫困户自己决定投资项目和选择产业.文章构建了包括贫困户和非贫困户的微观主体行为模型以及基于农村公平和效率的农村福利模型,分别研究了这两条新路径上贫困户福利和农村福利的动态演变过程,然后使用系统动力学模型进行了政策模拟,拟探索出我国产业精准扶贫的最优路径及其政策支持空间.结果显示:在第3~4年的时间内,GSP路径要优于GTP,但是超过4年,GTP路径上的贫困户福利和农村福利就会累进性超过GSP.而且,在GTP路径上的时间越长,扶贫效果就越好.在中长期,提高贫困户的技术水平,增加贫困户的初始资本额是进一步提高GTP路径上贫困户福利和农村福利水平的重要环节.文章的结论对于提高我国精准扶贫的理论自信,进一步完善我国产业精准扶贫政策体系具有一定的启示.     

Growth and poverty in developing countries

Despite the developing countries' impressive aggregate growth of the past 25 years, its benefits have only reached the poor to a very limited degree. Not only have the poorest countries grown relatively slowly, but growth processes are such that within most developing countries, the incomes of the poor increase much less than the average. Although many policies have been proposed to counter these trends, little has been done to estimate the possibilities for significantly reducing world poverty within a reasonable period. This paper develops a quantitative framework to project levels of poverty under different assumptions about GNP growth population growth and changes in income distribution. Although the interactions among development processes and policy instruments are not modelled in any detail, the results serve to clarify the nature of the problem. The policy simulations demonstrate that the elimination of absolute poverty by the end of this century is a highly unlikely prospect; even to achieve a substantial reduction will require a combination of policies designed to accelerate the growth of poor countries, to distribute the benefits of growth more equitably, and to reduce population increase.     

International Markets and Open Economy Macroeconomics: a Keynesian view

This paper attempts to sketch a Keynesian response to the gap between the reality of international capital markets and the ‘standard paradigm’ of economic theory that underpins the policy model offered to poor countries in relation to their participation in the world economy and their national macroeconomic management. Recent work on imperfect markets, much of it from self-styled ‘New Keynesian’ point of view, implies a substantial modification of this standard paradigm to allow for non-price clearing but this does not appear to to have been integrated with new trade theories, while the implications of systemic volatility and credit rationing behaviour have not been theorized. The paper suggests that a return to Keynes's original approach to investor uncertainty and global demand might not only help to integrate international macroeconomic theory in a plausible manner but also contribute to the foumulation of more desirable policy positions.     

Land Use in the 21st Century: Contributing to the Global Public Good

This paper focuses on the evolution of global public goods related to the world's land resources over the course of the 21st century, their potential impacts on the world's poorest households, as well as prospects for policy interventions aimed at enhancing these outcomes. It begins with global scale projections to 2100 of land use and associated goods and services, including food, fuel, timber, greenhouse gas emissions, carbon sequestration and biodiversity. This is followed by in‐depth discussion of each of these services and the challenges of providing these public goods in sufficient quantities to advance societal welfare—especially that of the world's poorest households. The paper concludes with a discussion of policies aimed at promoting the provision of land‐based public goods and how they could be altered to be more pro‐poor. Within this context, the paper argues that access to geospatial analysis tools and information on climate, land use and tenure, poverty and environmental indicators will become increasingly valuable to both public and private decision makers.     

Exchange Rate Asymmetry and Flexible Exchange Rates under Inflation Targeting Regimes: Evidence from Four East and Southeast Asian Countries

While many have underscored the role of a flexible exchange rate policy under an inflation targeting (IT) regime, very few studies have examined what actually happens to exchange rate policy once the emerging market announces that it will adopt inflation targeting. The central contention of this paper is that while the adoption of an inflation targeting (IT) policy may lead to more flexible exchange rate movements, for various reasons it is possible that the degree of flexibility will be significantly higher on one side of the market. In this study, we demonstrate that four Asian economies—namely, Indonesia, Korea, the Philippines and Thailand—whom were among the first group of emerging markets to embrace the inflation targeting framework of monetary policy, tend to adopt a form of asymmetrical exchange rate behavior, wherein appreciation pressures are restrained more substantially than depreciation pressures.     

The "Inability to be Self-Reliant" as an Indicator of Poverty: Trends for the U.S., 1975–97

In this paper we present a new concept of poverty, Self-Reliant poverty, which is based on the ability of a family, using its own resources, to support a level of consumption in excess of needs. This concept closely parallels the "capability poverty" measure that has been proposed by Amartya Sen. We use this measure to examine the trend and composition of the Self-Reliant poor population from 1975 to 1997. We find that Self-Reliant poverty has increased more rapidly over this period than has official poverty. Families considered to be the most vulnerable—those headed by minorities, single women with children, and individuals with low levels of education—have the highest levels of Self-Reliant poverty. However, these groups have also experienced the smallest increases in poverty. Conversely, families largely thought to be economically secure—those headed by whites, married men with children, and highly educated individuals—have the lowest levels of Self-Reliant poverty, but have experienced the largest increases in poverty. We also find that the Self-Reliant poor is increasingly composed of vulnerable groups relative to the composition of the official poor. The labor market, demographic, and policy sources of the divergent trends in Self-Reliant and official poverty, and of the gender, race and family structure changes in poverty rates are explored.     

Poverty and pollution abatement: Evidence from lead phase-out

An extensive literature suggests that poverty prevents nations from abating many forms of pollution. Considerable research also proposes a competing claim, that poverty delays but does not prevent pollution abatement. Neither position enjoys persuasive empirical support. Data describing the phase-out of leaded gasoline allow for empirical investigation and they support the latter claim—that poverty delays but does not prevent pollution abatement. Many poor nations have solved the problem of vehicular lead pollution and they have tended to follow rich nations in doing so. The phase-out achievements of richer nations have generated much of the ability and will that has enabled poor countries to solve the problem. The pattern of abatement sequencing and its root causes present important implications for environmental policy and research.     

A Multidimensional Poverty Index for Latin America

This paper proposes a new Multidimensional Poverty Index for Latin America. The index combines monetary and non‐monetary indicators, updates deprivation cut‐offs for certain traditional unsatisfied basic needs indicators and includes some new indicators, aiming to maximize regional comparability within the data constraints. The index is estimated for 17 countries of the region at two points in time—one around 2005 and the other around 2012. Overall, we estimate about 28 percent of people are multidimensionally poor in 2012 in the region. We find statistically significant reductions of poverty in most countries, both in terms of incidence and intensity over the period under analysis. However, important disparities between rural and urban areas remain. Statistical scrutiny of the index suggests that it captures the state of poverty relatively well while maintaining a certain parsimony and being highly robust to changes in weights, indicators, and poverty cut‐off.     

Misperceiving inequality

A vast literature suggests that economic inequality has important consequences for politics and public policy. Higher inequality is thought to increase demand for income redistribution in democracies and to discourage democratization and promote class conflict and revolution in dictatorships. Most such arguments crucially assume that ordinary people know how high inequality is, how it has been changing, and where they fit in the income distribution. Using a variety of large, cross‐national surveys, we show that, in recent years, ordinary people have had little idea about such things. What they think they know is often wrong. Widespread ignorance and misperceptions emerge robustly, regardless of data source, operationalization, and measurement method. Moreover, perceived inequality—not the actual level—correlates strongly with demand for redistribution and reported conflict between rich and poor. We suggest that most theories about political effects of inequality need to be reframed as theories about effects of perceived inequality.     

未雨绸缪还是杞人忧天——评“汇率浮动恐惧症”

面对金融国际化,新兴市场国应更重视汇率问题.引导新兴市场国的汇率政策选择的理论,如著名的"中间空洞理论"现在遇到越来越多的挑战,因为不少实证研究表明新兴市场国表现出"汇率浮动恐惧症".结合汇率不完全传递率的实证分析以及对贬值紧缩效应等的分析,新兴市场的"汇率浮动恐惧症"是合情但并非合理的表现,新兴市场国家事实上可以享用汇率浮动的好处,无需将自己陷入对浮动的恐惧当中,这样新兴市场国的汇率政策及汇率选择有了更大自由空间.     

QUANTIFYING ABSOLUTE POVERTY IN THE DEVELOPING WORLD

We estimate that in 1985 about one in five persons in the developing world lived in poverty, judged by the standards of the poorest countries. This rises to one in three at a common, more generous, poverty line. The aggregate consumption short-fall of the poorest fifth is about one half of one percent of world consumption, while that of the poorest third is a further one percent. The shape of the distribution of consumption suggests that aggregate poverty would fall fairly rapidly if moderate growth in average consumption levels can be sustained, and the poor share at least proportionally in that growth. However, it would take only small adverse shifts in the world distribution of consumption to eliminate the gains to the poor from growth.     

Beyond Becker: Training in Imperfect Labour Markets

In this paper, we survey non-competitive theories of training. With competitive labour markets, firms never pay for investments in general training, whereas when labour markets are imperfect, firm-sponsored training arises as an equilibrium phenomenon. We discuss a variety of evidence which support the predictions of non-competitive theories, and we draw some tentative policy conclusions from these models.     

Can Empathy Explain Gender Differences in Economic Policy Views in the United States?

This paper shows that different levels of empathy of men and women explain the well-documented gender differences in interventionist government economic policy views in the United States. Using the Davis Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI) to measure empathy, the study finds that more empathic people support more interventionist policies. While greater empathy leads both men and women to support more government action, there is no gender difference in the effects of empathy on policy views. When policy views are separated by area, gender differences on policies concerning poverty, inequality, and social welfare disappear once empathy is accounted for, though they persist in views on free markets.     

MEASURING THE ATTRIBUTES OF POVERTY AND ITS PERSISTENCE: A CASE STUDY OF ERITREA

This paper tries to identify the correlates of poverty in urban Eritrea using an estimation technique (the DOGEV model) that also allows for the inclusion of a measure of “persistence” in poverty levels from cross‐sectional estimation. The results suggest that 17 percent of the probability of being moderately poor and 22 percent of the probability of being extremely poor in Eritrea was attributable to this “persistence”—a predisposition toward poverty likely due to latent attributes related to past experience of poverty itself. The results also suggest that, in the post‐war economy of the mid‐1990s, those with vocational training fared best among all education groups. Being a war veteran also had a strong negative association with the poverty—reflecting successful attempts to support that group. The receipt of remittances also reduced the likelihood of poverty; though receipts from outside Eritrea had a much stronger effect than receipts from within Eritrea.     

Land rental markets and rural poverty dynamics in Northern Ethiopia: Panel data evidence using survival models

There is growing interest in understanding the links between land reforms, land markets, and poverty reduction in Africa. The study uses four‐wave panel data from the northern highlands of Ethiopia to assess the dynamics of rural poverty taking into account the status of participation of rural households in the land rental market. Applying both nonparametric (Kaplan–Meier estimator) and semi‐parametric survival models that control for duration dependence of poverty transition, results show participation and degree of participation on the supply side of the tenancy market (landlords) have highly significant and positive effect on the chances of escaping poverty while the same cannot be said about the demand side of the tenancy market (tenants). The empirical evidence also confirms that households headed by older and literate people have relatively larger exit rates from poverty as compared with households headed by younger and illiterate ones. Though transacting farmers may engage themselves in win–win rental arrangements by the time they join the tenancy market, results indicate that gains are unequal as those tenants who enter the markets from low economic leverage (were poor) are liable to face a lower margin of net gains, which may limit their ability to move out of poverty.     

Inside the Crystal Ball of Finance: Understanding Financial Economists' Attitudes to Market and Society

Market economists are thought to wield tremendous power—not only over financial markets but over governments that stray from the ‘market way’. Still, there is mystery about what economists think, and how they form their judgements. This article reports results from a survey of over 50 financial market economists from leading financial institutions in Australia conducted in December 2003 and January 2004. It provides insight into the opinions of economists who impact on markets and policy, especially through media commentary. The article identifies their economic and social views, comparing them with the Australian public. We then examine how professional views of economists differ from their personal views. Differences in professional and private views—especially over the role of government and labour markets—are an opportunity to ponder how judgements are formed and used. We offer tentative answers to the question: do these professionals—highly paid for their opinions—occasionally self‐censor?     

新型农村社会养老保险政策效果评估——收入、贫困、消费、主观福利和劳动供给

本文使用中国健康与养老追踪调查(CHARLS)数据,采用断点回归和双重差分识别策略,估计了"新农保"对农村老年人收入、贫困、消费、主观福利和劳动供给的影响。研究结果显示,"新农保"养老金收入显著提高了农村老年人的收入水平、减少了贫困的发生、提高了其主观福利,并在一定程度上促进了家庭消费和减少了老年人劳动供给。进一步的研究显示,健康状况较差的老年人受到的政策影响更大更显著,表明"新农保"的政策影响存在异质性。